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Show Laxity or Ignorance Causes Accidents The campaign to reduce automobile automo-bile accidents, started by President Hoover, and supported by the casualty cas-ualty insurance industry and other private and public organizations, can achieve its object only with the aid of two things public interest and cooperation and modernization of our traffic laws. So long as the inexperienced or Incompetent are allowed to drive automobiles, accidents will continue to rise. So long as our traffic regulations reg-ulations are inadequate and unenforced, unen-forced, we will be powerless to ope with the problem Too many drivers dri-vers regard traffic laws as something some-thing to be evaded. Not enough ol. of them are interested in having their officials change outmoded laws in favor of codes that are adequate to deal with our modern congested, high speed traffic. In the words of President Hoover. "There has been much effort to better traffic conditions but the accident rate, nevertheless, continues contin-ues to rise because the increasing volume of traffic outruns our efforts." ef-forts." In the past ten years millions of new cars, capable of great speeds, have appeared on the highways, while our regulatory machinery ma-chinery has remained practically unchanged. If the present trend continues, automobile accidents will soon cost us a billion dollars a year and wil". take 35,000 or more lives annually. That is a terrible price to pay for our laxity or ignorance in handling traffic. A united, active public consciousness is necessary to reduce re-duce the increasing toll of deaths and injuries. |